How to live with a messy part­ner

LIV­ING with a messy part­ner may seem like a mi­nor is­sue at first, but the ev­ery­day bur­den of hav­ing to pick up some­one else’s clothes ev­ery time you get back from work be­comes a bit off-putting in the long run.

Af­ter spend­ing a num­ber of week­ends at my boyfriend’s place and hav­ing to play the role of ‘skivvy’, I’m now aware that un­less I in­struct him to get off the couch and put his dishes in the sink af­ter eat­ing - he sim­ply won’t see it as nec­es­sary.

Ju­dith Penny from All Sorted and Natasha Nel from Make­room, who are both pro­fes­sional or­gan­is­ers, share tips on how to make liv­ing with a messy part­ner work:

Con­front the prob­lem “For the sake of peace let me not ask him to pick up his trousers from the floor or as­sist me with the dishes or even do the laun­dry ev­ery now and then” — that’s what I used to think be­fore re­al­is­ing it only gets worse when ig­nored.

Nel be­lieves it’s im­por­tant to cre­ate a team en­vi­ron­ment. “Do not al­ways be the one pick­ing up and clean­ing or else that will be­come your role.

How­ever, do not make rules that will make liv­ing at home a chore, some­times life gets busy and messi­ness hap­pens — that’s what makes a house a home; give it time to tran­si­tion and work to­gether to re­store the or­der.”

Be will­ing to com­pro­mise Liv­ing with some­one else who most likely doesn’t have the same ap­proach to home man­age­ment as you do, means you need to learn to find the mid­dle ground.

Penny says have a dis­cus­sion around why you like an or­gan­ised house, and why it’s frus­trat­ing for you to live in a mess.

“You should also work on ar­eas that should stay clut­ter-free and or­gan­ised, for ex­am­ple the liv­ing spa­ces, and let your messy part­ner have a space or two where you won’t in­ter­fere and let them do their thing.

“It is im­por­tant not to lay down the law with re­gard to how things should look, rather, both part­ners should share and dis­cuss how they feel about messi­ness and then try to com­pro­mise.”

Know the pros and cons Pros: Liv­ing with some­one else means that you al­ways have com­pany, ex­penses are shared, and you have some­one to cre­ate a home with. Cons: You can’t al­ways have it your way, which means some­times you won’t get that pink head­board and flo­ral wall­pa­per you want for the bed­room; to be fair you might some­times have to com­pro­mise.

Here are 8 top home man­age­ment tips from Penny and Nel to help you keep your home chaos-free:

1. Have a place for ev­ery­thing — putting some­thing away is so much eas­ier when you know where it be­longs.

Think about the best spot to put your books, CDS and so on, and en­sure that you store them away in the same place ev­ery time. You will soon both get into the habit and do it with­out even think­ing, says Penny.

2. Don’t put it down, put it away — it’s tempt­ing to put the keys down on the kitchen counter, or leave your gym bag at the front door be­cause it’s easy.

But that causes more work later on, rather put the items away im­me­di­ately, and that will make it eas­ier to find them later.

3. File, don’t pile and don’t print — keep all your pa­per­work in one spot and then set aside time on a reg­u­lar ba­sis to sort and file. Make sure you have a fil­ing sys­tem that works for you.

4. If in doubt, throw it out — Penny says ask your­self the fol­low­ing ques­tions: do I love it, do I use it, and why am I keep­ing it? Think twice be­fore you buy…some­thing in, some­thing out. — Prop­erty24

Hav­ing to pick up some­one else’s clothes be­comes a bit off-putting in the long run.